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This thesis aims to develop a theoretical model which explains how the penal realm functions qua system. A second aim is to use this model to challenge a number of contemporary theories of penal transformation (as advanced in the works of Malcolm Feeley and Jonathan Simon, David Garland and Tony Bottoms). Using empirical evidence from the Scottish Parole System, the argument is developed over the course of three case studies, each of which explores a different dimension of systemic functioning: the development of penal policy, the implementation of penal policy; and the decision-making practices of agents working within the system. The findings from the case studies suggest that the penal system functions in a manner akin to an eco-system in which there is a high level of interdependency and struggles for power and control between key sites in the system. The relative balance of power between these sites is determined by both extra and intra-systemic processes. The nature of these processes, in turn, indicates that penal transformation is more contingent and nuanced than contemporary theories would suggest. Transformation is most likely to occur under conditions of extra or intra-systemic strain; where tensions between the cultural practices of the system and the physical and conceptual space within which it is located, become too great to be sustained.

Over the last decade, jurisdictions across the UK have paid increased attention to the problem of human trafficking, as exemplified by the enactment of new specialised legislation (reserved and devolved), the increase in criminal justice and border control efforts, as well as the adoption of the UK-wide National Referral Mechanism ('NRM'), based on the system designed by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe ('OSCE'), to identify and deal with potential victims of human trafficking, perpetrators and their respective cases. This Mechanism, along with the UK's wider approach to human trafficking, have been criticised by NGOs and scholars for various reasons, such as poor identification skills of those officials who first come into contact with victims (known as first responders), lack of sufficient support and benefits to victims, as well as inequalities in decision outcomes between UK/EU and non-UK/EU victims, leading to governmental reviews and planned reforms. Despite efforts to understand and tackle the issues of the NRM by NGOs, researchers and policy makers, there has been limited attention paid by commentators to the policy context in which the NRM has been implemented and what this might reveal about the aforementioned problems of the Mechanism. In addition, efforts to examine human trafficking, arguably, have failed to fully capture all its angles and in particular to understand its tripartite nature: the victims' rights/needs aspect of it, the traffickers' side, as well as the state side (origin, destination and transit states) and particularly how a destination state regulates trafficking in relation to broader overarching issues affecting trafficking, meaning mainly immigration. Through documentary analysis of the main policies on human trafficking issued by the UK government at Westminster and the devolved governments, which constitute the NRM's foundations and context, a series of qualitative interviews with professionals involved in UK's anti-trafficking efforts and a case study of a female domestic survivor trafficked for sexual exploitation, this thesis offers a critical examination of how the UK regulates human trafficking, focusing on adult trafficking victims. Building on a theoretical framework, which draws on Christie's notion of ideal victims and offenders and Sharapov's examination of the images of trafficking victims and perpetrators in early-2010s UK policies, the thesis highlights how the dominant narrative of UK policies still tends to revolve around the idealisation of trafficking victims and demonisation of traffickers, often not paying respect to the full spectrum of human trafficking as underlined by literature, while promoting unrealistic goals, such as total trafficking elimination, primarily aiming to the UK's heroification as a leading anti-slavery force. Still, a slowly growing tendency to start focusing on a wider range of trafficking cases, on the range of victims based on varying levels of consent or trafficking experiences, the range of traffickers based on varying levels of organisation and the frequent fluidity between victims-traffickers was identified mainly in Westminster policies and much less in policies issued by the devolved governments. Simultaneously, the thesis pinpoints a polarisation between interviewees depending on their professional background, meaning between NGO interviewees and law enforcement interviewees. The former tended to idealise victims more and recognise the existence of a spectrum for traffickers and the latter underlined the spectrum for victims between those who consented to exploitation and those who were deceived/forced, whilst presenting traffickers as almost exclusively organised criminals. NGO interviewees also appeared to be more critical towards the NRM compared to law enforcement participants. Further, the idiosyncrasies of the UK constitutional setting and the deep-rooted ideological differences between Westminster and the Scottish Government have contributed to a fragmented approach across the UK. The different approach of the Scottish Government compared to Westminster renders the prospect of a devolved Scottish NRM worthy of further examination. The structure of the UK as a state that is neither federal nor unitary feeds and will continue to feed on the shortcomings of the UK's approach to trafficking, with the prospect of the UK regulatory practices radically improving, being thus quite limited. This thesis concludes by confirming and enriching existing literature, which has long pinpointed the existence of a spectrum of trafficking cases, also revealing how the UK's NRM impacts negatively on domestic victims. Finally, combining left realism in criminology, International Relations currents of thought (realism-idealism) and the theory of conflict of rights, this thesis also tries to enrich the teachings of the contemporary Criminology on immigration, trafficking and asylum, which often restricts itself to heavily moralising judgments on destination state practices. Through the theoretical framework of Criminological Moral Realism, this thesis tries to take into consideration all the crucial angles of such phenomena, as well as the regulatory challenges faced particularly by the destination state, as it seeks to balance between internationally legislated minimum standards of humanitarianist protection, on one hand, and the conflicted duties states have to satisfy (e.g. budget restraints, criminal justice successes) on the other, with the goal to fuse criminological thinking with a strong sense of realism to promote applicable policy improvements.

This thesis explores the major transformation of the Chilean juvenile justice system that was implemented in 2007. However, this is a much longer process that involves analysing the inter-relationship between polity building, the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule after 17 years of authoritarian regime over the 1970s and 1980s and the legitimation of democracy in the 1990s. Theoretical approaches to understanding the evolution of crime control and State punishment mechanisms usually refer to elements such as globalization (Newburn and Sparks, 2004), late modernity (Garland, 2001), or political economy (Dignan and Cavadino, 2007; Lacey, 2008). However, theory has also highlighted how the reform of justice systems forms part of broader processes of social transformation which, even though they involve an interaction with the wider world, are also dependent on their historical and local context (Melossi, Sozzo and Sparks, 2011). Nevertheless, most of what is known has been produced in developed, English-speaking democratic countries (or in relation to them) and rather less based on analysis of countries from the global south. The present work aims to reduce this gap. Based on documentary analysis and interviews, this thesis demonstrates the key symbolic role of juvenile justice to legitimate the new democratic rule in times of transition; how the impact of the continuation of authoritarian practices, people and ideology into democratic polity building can shape crime control and State punishment; and how the temporal, historical and cultural conditions of a given context can alter the meaning of what we believe are globally understood concepts and processes. In consequence, this research allows the understanding of a case that has not featured in the wider literature of penal transformation: a developing Latin-American country. It also offers the opportunity to analyse to what extent the existent research and theory of penal transformations can help to explain the drastic change in a context which is different to those where it is usually applied. In doing so, it contributes to the theoretical discussion of penal transformations with empirical research.

Penal politics and imprisonment in the English-speaking west are often presented as having become increasingly harsh and exclusionary since about 1970. Yet, curiously little attention has been given to Ireland and Scotland, two nations considered as exceptions to these pervasive punitive trends, and this presents some considerable gaps in our understanding of penal politics in this era. This thesis uses sociological and historical research to provide an in-depth comparative analysis of political culture and imprisonment regimes in Ireland and Scotland from 1970 until the 1990s. In so doing, the thesis also explores issues central to the history of punishment and comparative penology, in particular the 'punitive turn' in the late twentieth century. Using oral history interviews, archival research and documentary analysis this thesis recovers the history of penal culture in these two jurisdictions and examines how that changed and evolved over the latter part of the twentieth century. It draws upon resources from cultural sociology, governmentality studies and the sociology of punishment to develop the necessary conceptual resources to illuminate and compare penal politics and the varied practices which constitute imprisonment. Imprisonment regimes here are studied as comprising kinds of places, sets of routines and practices. Political culture, meanwhile, is understood as the working cultural symbols, passions, logic of government, political categories, and perceived social origins of crime. While providing grounded and detailed historical accounts of Ireland and Scotland these cases show how generic and global concepts, such as managerialism, rehabilitation, zero tolerance and incarceration intersect with their local social conditions and political relations. This thesis demonstrates that the heterogeneity of imprisonment regimes is a reflection of their political and social context. Therefore, the differences we see in the uses of imprisonment cross-nationally will both reflect and reconstitute their contrasting political cultures.

The research question is: How do young people experience having a family member in prison? This question is posed within the Scottish policymaking context, in which high rates of imprisonment and reoffending are entrenched problems for the Scottish Government. In relation to children and young people, there has been a focus on the performance measurement of holistic policies accessed through the universal services of health, education and social work. Although there has been a growing awareness of some key issues that affect families affected by imprisonment, concern tends to be focused on parental imprisonment, ignoring wider family relationships. In addition, older teenagers and young adults have largely been overlooked. This stage of development is an important one, because it represents the time when young people make the transition into adulthood. As such, it is highly intertwined with issues relating to self-­‐identity. The thesis addresses the policies that are most relevant to young people, as well as the policies that more generally relate to families affected by imprisonment. It takes an approach informed by critical discourse analysis to critique the construction of young people and families, arguing that Scottish policymaking fails to address the core needs of these young people, and that the Scottish Government only deals with families affected by imprisonment at arms length. This leaves a policy gap, which third sector organisations step in to fill. The research includes empirical data from young people, who described their experience in open-­‐structured interviews. A thematic analysis of the interview data shows the complexity of the emotional state that young people enter when faced with the imprisonment of a parent, sibling or partner. A discussion of the resultant psychological effects, with reference to classic sociology of imprisonment literature, demonstrates that imprisonment is potentially traumatizing, causing feelings of isolation and a sense of being ignored or even silenced. The empirical data also includes semi-­‐structured interviews with professionals from third sector organisations, whose evidence shows that the policy environment presents a number of obstacles that block the way to providing appropriate services to young people. In addition, the topic of family imprisonment is under-­‐explored by the professionals and this increases the risk that young people will feel the need to stay silent. In conclusion, the thesis reviews the theoretical framework, the policymaking environment and the lived experience of the young people and the professionals who work with them to conclude that there is a pressing problem, which is inadequately understood, and which requires the more insightful approach that research such as this can help to inform.

This thesis explores what it is like for families when a person is sentenced to a period of imprisonment in Scotland. Drawing on interviews with men and women in custody, family members in the community and relevant professionals this thesis will argue that the family relationships affected by imprisonment are many and varied: just as in wider society there is no one model of “prisoners’ families”. Despite the restriction of liberty inherent to a prison sentence, these families find creative ways to maintain relationships through active, embodied ‘displays’ and ‘practices’ such as physical affection, revisiting shared memories and traditions and the sharing of food, routines, family time and other ‘home comforts’. It is these displays that define and characterise family relations, rather than strict categories of blood or marriage. Yet imprisonment imposes a number of barriers to reciprocal family relationships and maintaining these active displays takes considerable effort on the part of the family outside. This division of emotional and practical labour is highly gendered, and as a result supporting a family member in custody can serve to entrench both gendered caring roles and the social marginality already experienced by participants. Finally, this thesis will argue that the complexity of family life is often not fully reflected in criminal justice policy or practice, yet the ways in which families are seen and responded to have implications for the overall legitimacy of the system. Together, these claims should cause us to reflect critically on the wider costs of imprisonment.

Over the past few decades, the large scale of imprisonment and the heavily-adopted punitive approach as a way of responding to crime have engendered widespread concerns among the public and academia in the UK. Whereas there have been a good number of studies that have investigated their underlying sociological causes and elaborated a variety of accounts of how such phenomena are historically configured and how they may be moderated or reversed, the normative dimensions of the current imprisonment complex have not yet received sufficient examination. This particularly regards the understanding of the tensions between the aspiration for a universal ideal of imprisonment and the reality of highly diverse and fragmented post-welfarist approaches in the incarceration field. This thesis tries to uncover and account for the dilemmas and problems in the normative sphere of incarceration in the UK. In doing so, it elaborates the analytical-evaluative framework based on the concept of introspective normativity.

Traditional understandings of violence by the mentally disordered largely look to mental illness to explain such behaviour. More recently, research has begun to examine the role of alternative factors in driving violent offending in this context. Masculinity is one such factor to which little consideration has thus far been given, in spite of a wealth of literature which associates the construction and maintenance of a masculine identity with violence in the non-mentally disordered context. This thesis proceeds from these current understandings, and examines the nature of the relationship between mental illness, masculinity and violent behaviour. In order to examine this issue, interviews were conducted with a group of 10 male patients diagnosed with major mental illness and with violent offending histories, in a medium secure forensic psychiatric hospital in Scotland. A group of 10 male prisoners serving life sentences in a Scottish adult male prison following convictions for homicide offences were also interviewed, and acted as a comparator group. Following an analysis of these interviews, findings emerged in relation to three key areas of patients’ and prisoners’ accounts: past experiences of violent offending, present experiences of institutional settings, and future hopes for recovery and desistance. In particular, significant similarities and divergences in the experiences of the two groups were apparent, and this thesis advances two key arguments in light of this. Considering first the similarities in patients’ and prisoners’ experiences, it is posited here that for both the mentally ill and non-mentally ill male population the task of constructing and maintaining a masculine identity is a particularly pervasive force in their life histories. It will be demonstrated that for patients and prisoners in this study, masculinity plays a significant role in past violent offending, as well as having important implications for adaptation to present institutional settings, and the creation of a recovered and desisting identity for the future. Second, in looking to the divergences in patients’ and prisoners’ accounts, it is asserted that where major mental illness is present it serves to intercede in these three areas of men’s lives. Extracts from interviews with male patients will illustrate the interceding role of mental illness in violent scenarios from their pasts. In addition, it will be demonstrated that patients’ and prisoners’ respective present situations in institutional settings vary, as diagnosis of mental illness leads patients to be placed in a secure hospital rather than the prison, and the differing nature of these environments results in divergences in adaptation to these settings. Finally, in relation to the future, while prisoners focussed on their hopes for desistance from offending, the diagnosis of mental illness led patients to place recovery from such disorders as the primary process at this point.

This thesis that is supported by the research findings is as follows: In private law contact disputes between parents, greater weight should be attached to the statutory requirement to give children an opportunity to express their views, as well as to the statutory requirement to protect them from abuse, rather than assuming on-going contact with a both parents is essential for the promotion of a child’s welfare. Despite the acquisition of rights by women and children since the late 19th century, it is argued, they remain disempowered within private law legal process as the patria potestas (paternal power) once held by married fathers, has evolved into this assumption that a child’s welfare requires direct, regular contact with his or her biological father – whether the child wants this or not. Consequently, where children’s views are taken, but they express a view contrary to on-going contact with their biological father, their wishes are often overridden and they may be forced by the court into contact arrangements that distress them. This is particularly problematic as the majority of cases coming before the courts involve serious welfare concerns (including domestic violence and the abuse of substances) and children often have lucid reasons for not wishing to be left under the care and control of their non-resident parent. Yet, these children may sometimes be further victimised by the court system charged with their protection.

This thesis seeks to understand and theorise the process of penal transformation, using changes in penal policy within post-devolution Scotland as a case study. It is based on an in-depth analysis of the evolution, passage and implementation of the Management of Offenders etc. (Scotland) Act 2005, including interviews with key players at each stage of the process (politicians, civil servants, practitioner groups) and documentary analysis. The thesis draws on Kingdon’s multiple streams framework to explain how rapid changes in policy can occur. Kingdon argued that the greatest changes occur when a policy window is opened which allows three independent streams which run through policy at any one time, politics, problems and policies, to become joined (1995). However the thesis argues that to account fully for transformation, this framework needs to be developed to incorporate analysis of institutional structures which provide the most compelling explanation for the factors which lead to, escalate and impede change. Although structures are central in this analysis however, this thesis shows how both structure and agency are important in penal change: institutional structure forms the parameters in which political choice is made. Pre-devolution policy-making was carried out in partnership between civil servants and agencies and the rate of change was incremental. Post-devolution criminal justice policy-making has been thrust into a volatile and politicised environment, although this has varied under the different administrations thus far. The primary reason for the accelerated rate of change that occurred following devolution was because of the creation of new democratic structures which provided the means and the incentives to create rapid change but it also involved explicitly political choices by key members of the Scottish Executive. Somewhat paradoxically, once change was instigated, the structure of post-devolution political institutions became critical in mitigating the pace and rate of change. The existence of PR electoral arrangements together with the relative decentralisation of power (in relation to the ownership of criminal justice services) meant that change had to be achieved through negotiation and compromise. Institutional structure is also important in the extent of the Parliament’s ability to form any meaningful veto point on executive power. Overall it was new democratic structures combined with a political capacitybuilding project and the availability of a politicised approach to law and order from England and Wales which could be easily translated to Scotland, which together, explain the period of rapid change in Scotland during this time.

This social learning analysis of Community Safety Partnerships in Scotland will develop two sets of arguments – one empirical and one epistemological. The empirical argument is that the well-documented difficulties in partnership working (largely a result of the very different occupational cultures, structures, roles and functions of the agencies generally brought on board) are not only very much in evidence but that current ways of organising and structuring partnership working in Scotland are also very often not conducive to overcoming them. It will be argued that viewing partnership working through the lens of a relational social learning perspective (Etienne Wenger’s theory of communities of practice) provides a clear set of recommendations for resolving these problems. These empirical arguments shall form the main focus of the thesis but, given the theoretical perspective employed, a related epistemological argument also emerged and shall be developed. It is generally accepted in theoretical criminology (and elsewhere in the social sciences) that the ideas and mentalities of the discipline have been shaped by the institutional contexts in which actors were doing criminology or criminal justice work (whether as practitioners or as scholars). Therefore, it will be argued that Community Safety Partnerships are important not only as sites of criminal justice practice but also as new institutional spaces in which ways of thinking about crime and community safety have the potential to be transformed. The empirical and epistemological arguments are interrelated because it will only be where the problems of conflict and communication within partnerships can be positively resolved that their potential to become sites of thinking that transcend traditional criminal justice mentalities will be fulfilled.

Using longitudinal data from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime and findings from qualitative interviews, it was found that the Children's Hearings system, in relation to young people referred on offending grounds, had no significant effect on the levels of self-reported offending in those referred to the Children's Hearings system, compared with a matched sample who had no contact with the system. In addition, no differences were found between a smaller matched sample who were placed on a Supervision Requirement and those with no contact with the system. The interventions provided within Supervision Requirements are argued to be ineffective and do not reflect the contemporary literature on effective practice. Interactions with the Children's Hearings system were not found to support labelling or deterrence theories. However, the gatekeeping practices of the police appeared to be biased and labelling in effect. The diversionary approach of the Children's Hearings system was supported through the finding that the majority of cohort members desisted from offending without requiring formal measures. It is argued that the functioning of the system could be improved by diverting more young people with offending behaviours prior to their referral to the Reporter (on the basis of their low risk and low levels of criminogenic needs). The small number of high risk offenders with high levels of criminogenic needs, who are unlikely to desist naturally, should receive structured interventions that reflect current findings in relation to effective practice.